User:Phillyfan27/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Judaism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
In class, we are learning about Zionism -- a form of Jewish nationalism. As related to this course content, I chose to evaluate Judaism (the religion of Jewish people).

Evaluate the article
In regards to the lead section, I think the writing would be more effective if these first two sentences were combined to become one sentence. I think the lead section does a good job of including brief descriptions of the sections to come. I did find, however, that some sections of the lead were slightly over-detailed. In my opinion, the top of the third paragraph gave a lot of detail regarding the variety of religious movements. Within Judaism, however I also understand why that might be important to include in the lead.

Considering content and tone, the "Origins" section has a biased claim from a "believer's point of view". The content seems to remain neutral otherwise, including sections such as "Religious texts", "Jewish identity", and "Jewish religious movements". I have noticed some areas of the page that are repetitive -- for example, the idea of Judaism being divided into major Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform traditions comes up several times in multiple sections. I also noticed that Zionism isn't brought up much here. This could be in an effort to keep the tone of the article neutral, but I would've expected Zionism and history of "the Jewish problem" to appear more than it did. The last edit made to this page was three hours ago.

In terms of sources and references... there are many! I think this article does a good job of citing all facts and information. I checked a few sources and they all seemed to be functional, relevant, and up-to-date. The sources are certainly thorough, as I feel like most of the ideas I had associated with Judaism are included and addressed on this page. Particularly in the "Religious texts" section, all texts include a link to a description/definition.

While the article is mostly devoid of grammar and spelling errors, I found that it wasn't the easiest to read (I feel this way about most Wikipedia pages). Particularly in the lead section -- the section that provides the reader with important, preliminary information -- includes some choppy and run-on sentences that could be improved. Otherwise, the sections seem to be well-organized and in a sensical order.

I think the images certainly enhance the understanding of the topic, but the captions could use some bulking up. For example, the "Sephardi style torah" and "Ashkenazi style torah" images could include a date for when the torahs were created or when the photo was captured and where would elevate the image. Additionally, some images were a little repetitive. There are multiple pictures of individuals praying at the Western Well, and while interesting to see, could be cut down.

Looking at the talk page, this article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale and is of interest to many WikiProjects including Judaism, Religion, Bible, Kabbalah, Jewish history, and Israel. All WikiProjects with the exception of Kabbalah are of "top-importance". In the comments, all users seem to be respectful of others' thoughts and ideas. When given feedback from another user, the editor of the page seems to embrace these changes and, if needed, feels comfortable posing questions as to why they may feel that way or how they should go about including these changes. I have noticed that in this neutral form of writing, the Wikipedia content differs from our class discussions. Considering our discussion last week regarding how collective emotion drove the Zionist movement, I wouldn't expect to see the inclusion of emotion anywhere on this page. Rather, the article simply states facts and information devoid of bias and describing emotion of parties involved.